Jazz Articles about Hank Mobley

Hank Mobley: Dippin'

by Chris May
April 28, 2006

Hank Mobley spent most of 1964 banged up for drug offences. The year of the Beatles' US breakthrough, which sounded the final death knell for hard bop as a mainline music of inner city youth, happened beyond Mobley's eyes and ears. Is it too fanciful to suppose he barely noticed it happening?

Probably yes. But it would explain the headlong vigour and take-no-prisoners confidence of 1965's Dippin'. The album starts with an explosive, declarative drum roll from Billy Higgins before ...

Hank Mobley: Workout

by Chris May
February 15, 2006

Miles Davis dissed him, Leonard Feather called him the middleweight champion, and most people thought that John Coltrane outshone him. Because of these and a few other real or imagined slings and arrows, a kind of victim support group vibe has gathered around Hank Mobley in recent years. He's in danger of going down in history as a tragic figure.

But hey! Here's another perspective to consider. Mobley recorded an astonishing 25 albums as a leader or co-leader for Blue ...

Hank Mobley: Hi Voltage

by George Harris
September 2, 2005

Poor Hank Mobley: overlooked and under appreciated in his lifetime not only as a tenor player, but also as a composer, as this '68 reissue testifies. While none of these originals have caught on through the years, Hi Voltage makes a strong case for a revisit of Mobley's songbook.

With an all-star frontline (Jackie McLean and Blue Mitchell), Mobley takes the band through a set of advanced hard bop ("Two and One"), sophisticated samba ("Bossa De Luxe"), and ...

Hank Mobley: Hi Voltage

by Samuel Chell
April 12, 2005

I'm one of those listeners so addicted to the blues-drenched, butterscotch-smooth sound of Hank Mobley's tenor that I can scarcely last a week without playing one of his recordings. The newly reissued Hi Voltage, unfortunately, turns out to be a negligible session by the “middleweight champion" of the tenor saxophone.

When the recording was made in the late sixties, the lyrical style associated with Mobley was falling out of favor, so he elected to try for a “harder ...

Respect for Hank Mobley

by Marshall Bowden
February 22, 2004

Hank Mobley always suffered from the perception in some quarters that he was neither an innovative nor particularly gifted improviser. This is hogwash, as the many Mobley reissues that are becoming available demonstrate. The main problem most listeners had with Mobley was that he was not fortunate enough to be born John Coltrane or Sonny Rollins. With these two tenor players seen as the most interesting and gifted of the time, Mobley was relegated to the back burner of mere ...

Hank Mobley

by Robert Spencer
February 22, 2004

In the Unsung Hero business some are more unsung than others, and Hank Mobley ranks with the most surpassingly unsung. But this is no distinction; it is a tragedy. Miles Davis dissed him, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins overshadowed him, and the avant-garde and fusion cast him into penniless obscurity. By the time he died in 1986 at the age of 55, he was largely forgotten. But who knows? If the great Hidden Hand had sent him into the world ...

Unsung Recordings by Hank Mobley

by Robert Spencer
February 22, 2004

Our “Unsung Recordings" section is designed to give you a sense of some of the best recordings of an “Unsung Hero." Here are two of Hank Mobley's greatest - and one of his most intriguing:

Soul Station (Blue Note RVG Edition 7243 4 95343 2 2)

Rudy Van Gelder made it sound great in 1960, and he has made it sound even better now. Soul Station is a set of four Mobley originals and two standards ...